Kimmel’s dehumanizing mockery of Mike Lindell foreshadowed his callous response to Charlie Kirk’s murder, making ABC’s suspension a long-overdue reckoning.
By Kelly John Walker, FreedomTalk Magazine
ABC has suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live! indefinitely following backlash over Kimmel’s recent comments about the Charlie Kirk assassination. The decision comes after years of the show featuring divisive political satire—often targeting Mike Lindell—and now raises questions about the consequences of weaponizing free speech and political commentary on late-night television.
It underscores that Kimmel just isn’t very funny. A career based on cheap shots at the expense of others has collapsed under the weight of its own cruelty. FCC Chair, Brendan Carr called Kimmel’s remarks, “truly sick.” Kimmel’s September 15 monologue included:
“We hit some new lows over the weekend with the MAGA gang desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them and with everything they can to score political points from it…
This is not how an adult [President Trump] grieves the murder of someone he calls a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish.”
No one is laughing now. And perhaps President Trump was onto something when he said, “Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible.”
It seems this opinion is widely held. Several ABC-affiliated station groups, including Nexstar, called Kimmel’s remarks “offensive and insensitive at a critical time in our national political discourse.”
We could have seen this coming, even if Jimmy Kimmel didn’t.
Over the years, Jimmy Kimmel has repeatedly lampooned Mike Lindell in comedic sketches and monologues, turning him into a recurring punchline for his political positions, activism, and claims. Kimmel’s style has been reminiscent of a high school bully who smiles on the surface, pretending to be a friend, while setting the outsider up to be the butt of the joke.
Jimmy Kimmel is a ‘Mean Girl’—and his story arc has reached its predictable end.
Yes, Jimmy Kimmel is a “Mean Girl”—the now-fallen leader of the Hollywood “Plastics”—and his story arc has reached its predictable end. In short, Kimmel had it coming.
One of the most striking examples of Kimmel’s poor choices came in February 2023, when Lindell—acting in good humor and good will—agreed to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! from inside a claw machine. What was presented as an opportunity for constructive dialogue turned out to be a setup crafted to mock him on national television. Kimmel had laid the groundwork during Lindell’s April 2021 appearance, assuring him, “A lot of people didn’t want you to come on this show…but I think it’s important that we talk to each other.”
The claw-machine bit went beyond lighthearted fun, focusing on ridiculing Lindell’s credibility and questioning why anyone would take him seriously, turning Lindell’s good-faith participation into a target of ridicule.
It has become clear that Kimmel’s overtures about ‘talking to each other’ were never made in the spirit of genuine dialogue.
Kimmel has also produced fake MyPillow ads that went beyond light satire, deliberately exaggerating Lindell’s political views and casting him in caricatured, often absurd scenarios—turning his public persona into a running joke for the show’s audience.
On multiple occasions, Kimmel has used extended comedy segments to lampoon Lindell’s claims about election integrity and voting machines, carefully staging bits that showcased Lindell as a spectacle—often even including clips of Lindell himself reacting—to amplify the ridicule and discredit his message.
While these sketches and jokes have reached wide audiences—and Lindell has often responded publicly, even with humor—it has become clear that Kimmel’s overtures about “talking to each other” were never made in the spirit of genuine dialogue. Instead, they served as a pretext to lure Lindell into situations where he could be ridiculed before a national audience.
This suspension is not just about one show—it’s a reckoning for a troubling trend in media.
Mike Lindell told FreedomTalk Magazine that he sees a consistent pattern in how he has been treated in public media and how reactions from media, regulators, and affiliates aligned with political pressure for years. Lindell sees Kimmel’s repeated satirical treatment—painful and often mocking—as part of a broader campaign of blacklisting that goes beyond mere disagreement. From the removal of his products from major retailers to his de-platforming and relentless portrayal as a punchline on national television, Lindell believes these actions form a concerted effort to marginalize him for his political views and activism rather than engage with his ideas in fair debate.
“…a political and media ecosystem that normalized dehumanizing conservatives as entertainment.”
These claims of top-down political targeting were substantiated this week with the release of records from the “Arctic Frost” investigation, which revealed that the Biden Administration, DOJ, and FBI used federal investigative power to sweep up nearly the entire Republican apparatus—including PACs, donor networks, Turning Point USA, Lindell Management, and dozens of GOP-aligned figures—under the guise of election integrity. This aligns with earlier reports and lawsuits alleging that the Biden White House pressured Big Tech platforms to suppress political speech, including election-related content and criticism of the administration.
What played out on late-night television was the cultural sniper’s bullet.
For Lindell, these revelations confirm what he has long maintained: that his blacklisting, de-platforming, and public ridicule were not isolated incidents but part of a coordinated campaign to marginalize dissenting voices and make examples of anyone who challenged the prevailing regime’s narrative.
The uproar over Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert isn’t really a debate about free speech—it’s about paid political satire masquerading as comedy. Jimmy Kimmel Live! and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert have survived long past their ratings prime because they’ve been underwritten by state and federal money: California expanded its $750-million-per-year TV tax credit program that helps cover their production costs, and during COVID the federal government poured millions into network coffers through vaccine advertising buys—ad dollars that indirectly subsidized these shows while they used their platforms to push government-approved messaging.
The Left was never defending free speech—it was blacklisting dissent, de-platforming critics, and using taxpayer-supported comedy shows to dominate the public square. What played out on late-night television was not harmless humor, but the cultural sniper’s bullet of an institutional campaign, aimed from boardrooms, newsrooms, and comedy green rooms at punishing dissenters and silencing anyone who dares challenge the approved narrative.
While Mike Lindell was fully exonerated by the released Arctic Frost documents, his inclusion in the dragnet demonstrates that his blacklisting, deplatforming, and public humiliation were part of a coordinated campaign to crush dissent. This systemic targeting trickled downstream into the culture, where late-night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel amplified the stigma—turning Lindell into a running punchline and a proxy for mocking the broader MAGA movement.
Kimmel’s “claw machine” stunt and fake MyPillow sketches are not isolated acts of comedy but reflections of a political and media ecosystem that normalized dehumanizing conservatives as entertainment.
Satire is an essential part of free speech, but when it is carried out in lockstep with dark political agendas, pushing a one-way march toward ideological hegemony, the lines become dangerously blurred.
Attorney General Pam Bondi is wrestling with the question of “hate speech,” but emotional intent is a red herring obscuring the deliberate psychological suppression of opposing political speech. Kimmel and others have done this routinely, as part of what appears to be a calculated Deep State effort to silence dissent and impose a political monoculture.
Blacklisting and political targeting aren’t fringe theories; they’re documented realities that warrant scrutiny. When entertainment outlets launder political bias through “humor,” they corrode public trust and turn comedy into a partisan weapon, rather than following the evidence where it leads.
Kimmel’s pattern—dehumanizing Mike Lindell for laughs and responding with callous derision to Charlie Kirk’s murder—crossed a line, and everybody knows it, especially those responsible. For years, his satire functioned less as comedy and more as a paid service to a political agenda, normalizing the humiliation of ideological opponents.
Kimmel’s suspension is not censorship but accountability—a long-overdue corrective that exposes the evil of weaponized ridicule masquerading as humor. It will be written into the history books as a cautionary tale, reminding us that influence must never be purchased with the ritual humiliation of dissenters, and the media’s role is to challenge power, not prostitute itself to an orthodoxy.
Kelly John Walker is an American statesman, senior writer, author, and entrepreneur. He is the Founder of FreedomTalk, Editor-in-Chief of FreedomTalk Magazine, and Co-Founder of Parents Demanding Justice Alliance. His work has appeared in The Washington Times, Gateway Pundit, The Epoch Times, Newsmax, Townhall, Law Enforcement Today, and more. He’s a frequent guest on national programs including Real America’s Voice, Bannon’s War Room, NTD Capitol Report, and more. Kelly holds degrees in English, Theology, and a Master of Science earned on a U.S. Department of Defense fellowship. In 2020, after being canceled and arrested for standing against government overreach, he became a leading independent journalist and advocate for liberty and parental rights.
